Esther N McCarthy: Would I be a different mother if I was rearing you, my imaginary daughter?

I remember one elderly neighbour grabbing my hand in sympathy at my front door when I told her my third newborn was of the penis persuasion.

“Oh Jesus, I’m so sorry! I’d be lost without my Mary. She’s the only one who takes me shopping. You’ll have to go again.”

My five-day-old heterogametic was in ICU at the time and I was pumping milk out every two to three hours so my husband could drive it up to the hospital, a miserable couple of ounces at a time, because my body refused to give up the precious liquid gold to a throbbing machine instead of my little baby. 

I used to hunch at the kitchen table, stitched together physically, if not emotionally, the 4am milkings the worst, desperately trying to inhale his scent from a worn babygro, swiping away the tears so they wouldn’t blur my focus on my photo of him in his glass chamber, tubes in his tiny nose, a pale primrose-yellow cap knitted by a charity, on his unfused head.

“So sorry Mrs H, I can’t respond in an emotionally-appropriate way as my heart has been clawed out and plopped, bloody and mangled, above in the CUMH, and will only function again when I get him back. Anyway! Boys wreck your house, girls wreck your head!” 

I do wonder though — would I be a different kind of mother if I was rearing you, my imaginary daughter? My own mother died when she was 24. I was two, my sister was one. We were mammied and loved and minded by incredible women — and men. I had exemplary role models of what motherhood meant, and I’m forever grateful.

But would I be different if my mammy was here to guide me along?

I never told anyone this, but here you go, a little story for you, hypothetical daughter dearest. The first inkling I had of you. 

It’s 2008, your father, myself, and three friends are in Mumbai ordering tequila shots and local beers, but I just can’t stomach them. A hint that there is something inside me dictating new terms and conditions, but I put it down to jet lag and backpacking in 40-degree heat in monsoon season. In Kerala, I get another fertilisation flag: my period is about three weeks late.

My fellow (virile) possible parent-to-be buys eight pregnancy tests, I do the pee-stick dance in a dingy hotel where the cockroaches are the size of cats and the massive mosquitos are a constant background thrum.

All the tests show a slight, lethargic second line; I fob them off as faulty.

Denial may be a river in Egypt, but it had a sizable tributary in India that year. A week later, I’m sitting with my female travel-mates in Goa, feeling fierce queasy. “Besides being pregnant, is there any other reason my period could be late?” I ask idiotically. The two exchange a glance and tell it to me straight. “You’re up the duff, you dope.” That very night, and for the rest of my pregnancy, I dream of a blonde little girl — hey you!

Back in Cork, all through the trimesters you invade my sleeping world, my little beauty. I can still see you clearly — white blonde hair, peachy skin, always in motion. In the dreams, it’s light and sunny. I named you Hannah Linda Ann and couldn’t wait to meet you. So you can imagine my surprise when they handed me a squalling boy at the end of what turned out to be a traumatic, dramatic birth.

Err... what’s this? It made a farce of my plan for matching going-home outfits, I can tell you.

But here we are now, our family of three brilliant boys, a male dog, and a castrated cat. Balls. But you’re still with me, Hannah. Just the other day, we were stopped in traffic lights outside that same maternity hospital where we lugged up the pumped milk. There was a white-haired man fingering rosary beads and a blank-faced woman leaning up against the rail, adorned with printed banners. Pray for an end to abortion, said one. All lives matter, said another.

I press the button to roll down the window.

“Mom, don’t!” my three sons say in unison. They’re 13, 11, and the ICU fella is a healthy seven-year-old with a mohawk. They know I’m planning to roar out the window, they’ve seen me do it before. I glance back at them, and see you shimmering, my imaginary daughter amongst them.

They don’t have your worries, do they? Their insides and outsides aren’t for public display, commentary, and control. They won’t be damned if they do, and destroyed if they don’t.

For you, my daughter, I roll back up the window and have the conversations with my boys, the age-appropriate discussions of consent and care and concern for the half of the human race that still don’t have their privileges, even in 2022.

For you, my daughter, hypothetical Hannah, I try to make my sons allies.

I’ll carry the worry for you and about you. I see you.

And for my 24-year-old mammy, who never got to see us grow, who lived and died in a different Ireland.

Linda, without whom none of my children would exist, your sacrifice, your love, your loss, I see you too.

I’ll wreck enough heads for all of us. As for the house, we’ll wreck it together, for the laugh.